


The (Wonder)Fall of Hannibal Lecter

by Shampain



Category: Hannibal (TV), Wonderfalls
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-14 20:41:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shampain/pseuds/Shampain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day was going just fine for Hannibal, until the statue began to speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. conversing with franklin

The day was going just fine for Hannibal, until the statue began to speak.

As far as Hannibal was concerned, there was nothing altogether wrong with personifying the inanimate. _We must find some way to connect our psyche to the world beyond ours; and as we can create emotional attachments to our surroundings – a family home, a first car, a scent – we can create for ourselves an illusion of life, where there was none. Why did the rain seem so sad? How come Saturdays were full of possibilities? These could all be blamed on our willingness to form an emotional response to almost anything in the world._

But not for Hannibal. Hannibal did not _need_ the statue to speak. Yet speak it did; it cleared its throat a few times, loudly. It was not tentative; rather, it rudely commanded his attention when Hannibal, a very expensive, very sought after psychiatrist, was busy.

Hannibal had stopped writing, his pen still. Without the scratch of the nib against paper, the office seemed suspiciously silent.

“Be nice to Will.”

Hannibal stood, casting his eyes around the room. Of course his first thought was that someone had managed to get into his office without his knowing, but that was impossible. He was a careful man; he had a lifestyle that demanded it.

“Is somebody else in here?” he asked, his voice polite, even. As far as lions go, Hannibal never showed his teeth until the last moment. And then, it was too late. He rotated lightly on the heels of his Italian-made shoes, and stared upward, at the small library he kept further up along the wall.

Then he saw it, a slight movement. The statue on one of his ornamental side tables had somehow turned its head, and was staring at him expectantly.

There was a logical explanation to this; anything illogical, after all, was not an explanation, merely an excuse. Excuses were not something Hannibal was interested in. The statue blinked at him. Hannibal folded his arms over his chest. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, experimentally.

The exquisitely carved mouth opened again. “Be nice to Will.”

This offended Hannibal on many levels. Even if the statue was not a statue, it was still an animal. Animals did not have the capacity for speech. And animals did not tell Hannibal Lecter what to do; in fact, nobody did, alive or dead, organic or inorganic. Not without repercussions.

The fact an inanimate object had suddenly become animate _was_ bothering him, but so were a great many things, at that moment. Hannibal took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and, with the same sense of experimentation as before, he draped it over the statue, to see if the voice needed his vision in order to be heard.

Silence. Then: “Be nice to Will.”

This clearly was not working. Hannibal took the handkerchief back, folded it, tucked it back into its pocket. He considered the statue. It stared at him, almost challengingly.

That did it. Hannibal picked it up – it was extremely heavy – and walked over to his desk. He set it behind the desk, on the chair, out of sight. He did not want to look at it when his next appointment arrived.

 -

Franklin started out just fine during the session, but Hannibal knew him well enough to know that things could go downhill very quickly, and for that reason he was cautious, especially with a third party in the room.

He was interested to see if Franklin heard the voice, too, but his patient made no hint that they were anything but alone – and Franklin was the sort of person who noticed everything, if only because he assumed it pertained to him. Thus, Hannibal listened attentively, even though the statue behind his desk was still talking.

He focused on Franklin’s round, bearded face. Franklin was upset because he felt powerless in his job and, therefore, his life, and it had come to a head today when his boss had chosen someone else to lead a new initiative that he, Franklin, had originally drafted.

“Go call Will,” the statue demanded.

“I feel invisible. And when I feel invisible, it’s like I don’t exist. That’s my existential crisis, right there,” Franklin said. As per usual, his remarks were tinged with a self awareness that came from his own need to try to understand who he was and what he was. If it weren’t for his colossal self doubt, amongst other things, he may not have bothered with therapists at all.

“From time it time, it is normal to question our lives in that way,” Hannibal remarked. “After all, we exist in two ways – by ourselves, and through the perceptions of others. If we feel we cannot be perceived, then only in one way can we verify our existence. Sometimes, we cannot even do that.”

“It’s just... it’s hard. It’s hard to go to work and wonder if you’re really there. If you’re actually contributing to life.”

“The only life we can truly contribute to, Franklin, is our own.”

“Call. Will!” the statue barked.

When Franklin had left, and Hannibal had no more appointments to attend to, he retrieved the statue from behind his desk, replaced it on the table where it belonged. He was not prepared to unbalance the careful arrangement of his office just because one of the decorations insisted on uninspiring conversation.

“Call Will,” it said again, as Hannibal sorted his desk out, secured his files, readied himself to leave. “Call Will, and be nice to him. Be nice to Will.”

As he was leaving, the porcelain horse by the door tipped its head back and looked up at him. “I like Franklin,” it said, in a wheezy voice. “Don’t get rid of him.”

“So you speak as well?” Hannibal asked, but he didn’t care for the answer. He flicked the lights off and closed the door. He was cooking dinner for Alana, and he refused to serve dinner late.

 


	2. alana for dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A discussion, purely academic, about the possible causes of literal anthropomorphism (also known as: the statues are talking, _why_ are the statues talking?)

He enjoyed having Alana Bloom over. She was one of the few in the psychiatric community – in the world – for which her presence was nothing _but_ enjoyable. She lacked any neuroses, had a calm and honest opinion of everything, and she was lovely to look at. Hannibal appreciated fine and beautiful things, and Alana was one of them, though he would only touch on this in his mild, playful flirtations with her. It would not do to let her know the full extent of his appreciation – knowing the false image he projected to her at all times, she would misunderstand.

Hopefully, nothing in his house would choose to speak to him while Doctor Bloom was over, if only because she was a sharper observer than most. She would note if his eyes strayed to the side, or if, for once, he was only pretending to listen to her than actually listening. Luckily, nothing in Hannibal’s dining room or kitchen had the capacity for speech (not anymore, anyway).

There was a positive to having her around, however. He did not wish for her to be aware that he was experiencing something rather unsettling, but she remained a good sounding board for anything he might be curious about. It had to do with her intelligence as much as her stable nature, and gentle debate was never something they had shied from during their time as colleagues.

It was just the two of them tonight. Hannibal did not crave company, but he never minded having anyone for dinner. Over for dinner. Well.

“It’s been awhile,” she remarked, silver flashing as she diced up a length of cucumber. She was also one of the few people he didn’t mind being in the kitchen with. She was not obsessive or controlled about her environment, but she really was quite precise with a knife.

“For which I take full responsibility.”

“I would say the responsibility is Jack’s,” Alana said, dryly. She lifted the fluted beer glass to her lips. “But I suppose we could say you are rather taken with your second job.”

“I would not go so far as to call it that.”

“I suppose not.” She pursed her lips and tipped her head to the side. She was not aware she was as lovely as she was; the effect made her simply lovelier. “You do get a bit attached to Will, after a stage.”

Hannibal turned down the oven, where the lamb shanks were in the final stages of baking. He timed everything precisely so that it was ready the moment it left the oven, and not a second sooner. And never would he leave anything besides dessert in an oven to keep warm; there was nothing worse than overdone meat, in his opinion.

 _Be nice to Will_. If that was his subconscious talking, he really could not understand the sentiment just yet. Alana was clearly attached, but Hannibal was mostly fascinated. Imagine having the perception to see as Will did? To see through anything and anyone? _Almost_ anyone. “Something tells me he is a bit of an investment,” he said. “One does not simply brush against Will. He is such a person that a mere acquaintance will never be enough.”

“Something tells you?”

The woman missed nothing but, then again, that was a bit of a knee jerk response for psychiatrists throughout the world.

He smiled at her. “You’re not about to psychoanalyze me, are you, Dr. Bloom?”

“I would never dream of it,” she said, with a laugh.

He had made himself an opening, however, and Hannibal, with deft movements, widened it a bit. “That does remind me, however,” he said. “A patient posed to me a question today. Far be it from me to say any more than that, but I was rather a bit stumped.”

Alana was an academic woman. Something immediately came to life in her eyes, though her response was, as always, friendly and calm. “I find the words ‘Hannibal’ and ‘stumped’ to be completely incompatible in the same sentence.”

“You tease me.”

“I do. But continue.”

“He was experiencing strong emotional connections to everything around him – I think, perhaps, a result of his battle with ongoing depression – where his feelings were completely out of control. He said he felt like everything was talking to him.”

“You mean, beyond an emotional attachment to something with symbolic history?”

“Exactly. It is entirely normal to be moved by something belonging to a dead grandparent, but not, perhaps, to your neighbour’s mailbox.”

“I’m hoping he wasn’t being moved by a mailbox. Or that it chose to speak to him.”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality means I cannot say.”

Alana grinned a lopsided grin. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s turn this academic and, therefore, impersonal. With a patient who has no history of schizophrenia, and they are experiencing emotions to the point where they feel like they are communicating with their surroundings – not talking _to_ but _with_ – if you didn’t know this patient, what would be your first hypothesis?”

This was why she was so useful. Hannibal paused in assembling their vinaigrette.  “In some sense,” Hannibal said, “I think it might have a correlation to some form of synaesthesia. That would be my first guess.”

Alana’s forehead wrinkled slightly in thought; a charming effect. “Ordinal linguistic personification, you mean? Though that has more to do with sequential ideas, rather than actual objects. I would have gone for excessive anthropomorphism.”

Anthropomorphism; to relay to an inanimate object human characteristics. A tool found in religion, literature, children’s movies. Hannibal took a thoughtful sip of his wine, pausing to breathe in its notes first, cherry, chocolate, a kiss of smoke. “I agree,” he said. “But I must point out that anthropomorphism is a literary tool. If not, we really would think all hurricanes are women.”

She grinned, raising her glass of beer to him in a mock toast. He smiled back. “But aren’t they?”

“There is a strong resemblance, in a few cases. But I for one cannot see it.”

“Well, stress can do many things to us physically, Hannibal. It could simply be that,” she pointed out. “When we’re tired, our eyes might experience a flicker of an image that is a response of purely mental stimuli. It could be that your patient is suffering the same thing. And even the smallest episode can, for someone particularly neurotic, be blown out of proportion.”

“I had considered that was the actual cause, yes. The state of the world from the mouth of a patient will always hold a tint, just as the world is when viewed through our own eyes.”

“Agreed.” Alana smiled at him. “Well, that’s nice. I like when we agree.”

“As do I. Though you are one of the most enjoyable disagreeable people I have met, myself.”

“You certainly know the way to a woman’s heart, Hannibal.”

“I always thought you above flattery.”

“Oh, I meant the lamb shank. And beer.” Using the edge of the knife, she swept her cut vegetables to the side, for him to arrange in a salad plate to his liking for their first course. “I’ll let you finish up in here. The sitting room is a better place to nurse this calibre of beer than the kitchen. I eagerly await the ring of the dinner bell.”

 


End file.
